


Her Dowry

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 08:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/950838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does a woman do when she has sold away her worth?  She survives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Dowry

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to draw Fantine but then I remembered I can't draw, so I tried to write a character study loosely based off of the drawing I wanted to make but them I remembered I can't write Fantine well. But since this fic is marginally less shitty than the drawing, I figured I'd post it since there's not enough Fantine out there.
> 
> Maybe some day I'll try to write a fluffy Fantine fic since she deserves to be happy, but this is about as far from happy as it gets 
> 
> gomen

With youth comes a certain unavoidable vanity that is neither sinful nor virtuous, it just _is_. Fantine wore this vanity with such humble obliviousness that it served to amplify her charms. She knew she was beautiful, though. Tholomyes made sure to whisper couplets of adoration into her hair when they would lie together under the looming stars, free of consequences or care for tomorrow. 

This knowledge meant nothing to Fantine, until his words started to have an unintentional affect. They made her feel loved and warm, yes, but they create in her mind an unfortunate affliction that falls on many young and beautiful girls. Slowly, almost unconsciously, they twisted her thoughts like the dials on a radio until she began measuring her worth in beauty.

Golden hair that practically glowed as if it were a sibling of the sun, a smile that would charm Aphrodite herself, these became Fantine's defenses against the cynicism of the world. _These people find me charming,_ she would think when sitting among her friends, _I belong_. 

_I have worth._

With youth also comes naiveté. Fantine was unaware of how poisonous and vile Tholomyes's words were, because she was unaware of how poisonous and vile of a man Tholomyes was.

She believed he loved her, and that gave her comfort. Even when he lectured her about why she should not marry and embraced Favorite, she smiled. _He is drunk_ , she thought with a light twisting in her stomach, _he does not know what he does._

She was beautiful, because she was happy. She was beautiful, because she was a fool.

Even when he left her behind with nothing but a swelling belly, she brushed the gold in her hair and flaunted the pearls in her mouth. She watched her child grow until she no longer had the funds or the means. As she handed Cosette off to that family with the inn, she ran a delicate hand through the light brown hairs sprouting on her child's head, and prayed. 

This child was worth each breath and drop of sweat shed at the factory. Her fingers became callused and cut, her knees ached something terrible after standing for hours, and her stomach pleaded for food. Yet even under the stress of working, she was radiant and proud.

And now she has sold that beauty. 

So she stands in the filth of the docks, donning the harlequin frills scrapped out of the gutter for her. She holds the gold in her hands; she wraps the pearls around her arms. She thrusts them towards men walking down the avenue, and they pull her close with horrible grins. They take her worth to bed with them, and whisper into the useless sheared mess atop her head. They sound like vultures laughing at a crow with clipped wings, just before devouring it. They sound like _him_. 

And that's when she notices the gold crumbling like dirt, the pearls yellowing and cracking. Men scrape at her scalp with blunt fingernails and laugh at her toothless smile. When they whisper of beauty, it sounds like mockery; it makes her want to scratch at their faces and bite off their tongues.

But she doesn't, because she thinks that her submissive compliance is all she's worth. Without it, she's just a toothless beggar, a hairless wench. She can't keep Cosette cared for like that. The men may make cruel jokes about her closed-mouth smile and ratty bonnet, but they still drop coin in her lap after using her. That is all she needs from them. 

When the snow starts to fall, the cold sinks into her bones like her innocence crying out to her, _why have you done this_?

 _Becuase I must, she replies_ , and gets to work.

Even as her lungs rebel and force dry ugly coughs up through her throat, she carries on. She is sick so that Cosette may be healthy. Dreams of her daughter sleeping under heavy quilts near the fire find her each night, and some mornings she even wakes up smiling.  She could be cursed with every illness on this Earth, and she would still hold her head high and collect coin for her daughter's sake.

But then one morning, an older woman sits her in front of a mirror to smear dyes across her face to “brighten her cheeks and make her appear as an innocent young lass.” It turns Fantine's stomach to look into her reflection, distorted and obscured by dirt and cracks in the glass. Her face is as pale and white as sin, her cheeks as red and bright as ripened cherries.

She gets the idea in her head that she should wipe her face clean and run to that inn, to take her daughter in her arms and flee to a city where she isn't known as a woman of the town, as a dishonorable adulteress. But the lesions on her feet throb even when she sits; her lungs contract tightly even when she does not run.

And her face, her sad thin face, would Cosette even recognize it?

It would be a fool's journey, and now Fantine is well enough acquainted with foolishness to know when to avoid it. Her desire to hold her child will have to go unsatisfied until she has the funds to pay off the innkeepers.

So she sits and soaks in her reflection while the crone readies her for the day. The pearls turn to dirt in her mouth, the gold falls to dust to be swept away by the wind. But she is alive. Cosette is alive.

A smile dotted unevenly with baby teeth, brown hair growing dark and thick, these things are worth a lifetime of gold and pearls to Fantine.


End file.
